


The Colour Drabbles

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten snippets of Sherlock and John's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Colour Drabbles

**Author's Note:**

> A year ago I wrote ten drabbles of a hundred words each on the colours prompts at sherlock100. "Brown" refers to my story "For the Shopping List You Always Lose". Original entries [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/7914.html) and [here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/8036.html) at my Livejournal. Unbetaed so apologies for any mistakes. Thank you for reading!

**Red**  
  
“… now I’m gonna give you some proper gagging, you fucking poofter, before I smash your pretty--“  
  
The last word is lost in a horrible crunching sound. Both of John’s hands, clenched into a heavy fist, have connected sideways to the man’s talking jaw. A thud and then there’s only the dripping sound of water, coming through the cracks on the filthy walls. And John’s ragged, thundering breathing. It’s echoing through the dingy basement, in which Sherlock’s sat tied up and gagged for eight hours.  
  
John is standing over the slumped criminal, chest heaving. Sherlock’s eyes swallow him whole.  
  
  
 **Orange**  
  
“John, I’m going to have to call you if I don’t get a reply in the next five minutes. SH”  
  
In less than four minutes, John’s phone is ringing.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“So you are alive.”  
  
“Of course I’m alive.”  
  
“You’ve not replied to any of my messages.”  
  
“You text me up to thirty times a day when there’s no case, Sherlock! I haven’t got unlimited texting, and I won’t indulge your-- Hello? Sherlock?”  
  
Another ten minutes and John’s phone beeps.  
  
“You’ve got a new contract with _Orange_. Unlimited texts. And unlimited calls to my number. You can thank me later. SH”  
  
  
 **Purple**  
  
This isn’t a game, not at all. It’s _almost_ stopped being fun a few times before, but even the pool incident somehow turned into an adventure. For a moment Sherlock had lost all enjoyment, but then it was alright. They both recovered. It was fun, it wasn’t _for real_.  
  
But what Moriarty doesn’t do, a lot of purple does. Sherlock finds John unconscious. John's wrists are violently purple, his eye is purple, there are purple marks on his throat. Sherlock is shaking. He wants to erase the colour from the spectrum of light. This is not, not, not fun anymore.  
  
  
 **Black**  
  
John sees the figures in the lit room across and he doesn’t get it all, but his instincts have always been powerful. His lungs expand and he yells a name, which travels across, converting into whisper. The intended recipient is holding a small bottle in his hand and is oblivious to anything else.  
  
John reaches for his gun. He is the one in the dark room, but the blackness is over there. And Sherlock is drowning in it. John learns his first lesson about Sherlock Holmes- his mind knows no bounds, but neither does the man himself. Idiot.

John shoots.  
  
  
 **Brown**  
  
John is rummaging through his drawer, looking for some paper-clips. There’s _some_ order, but it is his “Miscellaneous things that won’t fit anywhere else” drawer after all. His finger prods a badge pin and John ouches silently. He sucks on the pierced spot, while his other hand keeps pushing through a variety of objects.  
  
Suddenly he spots a neatly folded, smallish, completely inconspicuous brown paper bag. His fingers still, then slide down over it gently, once. The object, which was given to him in it, is stuck on their fridge door.  
  
John re-arranges the bag carefully and continues his search.

 

**Yellow.**

  
" 'Xcuse me! Mummy says I can give you this to say thank you.”  
  
Sherlock looks disconcertedly at the little girl so John takes the offering. They look at it. John’s mouth stretches to mimic what his eyes meet.  
  
A typical drawing by a five-year old. Two men. One has yellow hair (John sighs wistfully), a stripy jumper and a smile, semi-circling his face from ear to ear. The other is taller, has black hair, a long coat and his mouth’s corner is, shockingly, tilted upwards too. They both have dots for eyes and sticks for hands. The sticks are touching.  
  
  
 **Green.**  
  
Sebastian leaves the fancy restaurant at St Katherine’s Docks alone, with a lighter wallet and a sour face. He’s just had dinner with some high-fliers whose… _everything_ was bigger than his.

  
In the near-by café Sherlock looks like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra, while talking to John. Judging by his enthralled face, John’s enjoying the concert. He uses a pause for intake of breath to shove a piece of muffin in the speaker’s mouth.  
  
Sebastian looks at them. Then he calls Sherlock a freak and walks towards his luxurious Shad Thames accommodation. He tells himself he’s got a great life.  
  
  
  
 **Colourless**  
  
The things we take for granted. They link our day-to-day experiences like the ribbon holds together the beads of the rosary. We blink into the light of day not seeing it; we drink water: plain, sweetened, boiled- but don’t savour it. Our body’s mostly made of it- and Sherlock likes to _know_ about the body- but he, too, forgets about water, until his head is splitting from dehydration. Water’s just transport, like everything else.  
  
Like the colourless, odourless gas that isn’t entering John’s lungs. Sherlock takes a deep breath and exhales into John’s ashen mouth. And again. And again.  
  
“Breathe!”  
  
  
  
 **White**  
  
They queue at the gates of heaven after a rather tedious argument about petty things such as drugs and guns. John just _knew_ the management here would be splitting hairs!  
  
Sherlock’s taken to deducing the cause of death of people- and since everyone around them is dead, this _is_ heaven for Sherlock.  
  
“Next!” a ubiquitous bureaucratic voice calls. They move.  
  
“Welcome to heaven. Put this on.”  
  
“This” is a long white robe. John starts shrugging into his, then looks at Sherlock: “Aren’t you going to put one on?”  
  
Sherlock gives him a dead-pan look and imperiously swirls ahead in his coat.  
  
  
  
 **Blue**  
  
It’s their worst argument to-date. They both rattle and hiss- well, Sherlock does, John only shouts like the wonderfully human thing he is. Then he leaves. In the next few hours Sherlock repeatedly gashes himself on the razor blade of his feared madness.  
  
John comes back at midnight. He’s at the door, he looks in- and next, he’s pushing up Sherlock’s sleeve, face the stuff of tragic poetry. They scuffle. John wins. He drags the elbow nearer the weak light and breathes over the blue vein.  
  
Then he caresses its smooth, untainted line with his fingers over and over again.


End file.
